In 1875 there were 3,500 to 4,000 licensed saloons and liquor dealers in Brooklyn, New York. Among proprietors were German immigrants Henry and Herman H. Cordes, each of whom operated a saloon in the Red Hook section of the New York borough, a district notorious for rowdy behavior similar to the American West. Cousins, the Cordes boys were similar in their ability to find trouble in their adopted country.
That was not difficult in Red Hook, a rough, unruly neighborhood during the middle and late 1800s. From its earliest days Red Hook was a port. Seamen from around the world thronged its docks and visited its saloons, eateries, brothels and gambling joints. The resident population was predominantly German and Irish, both with reputations for imbibing. Obtaining a liquor license was a canny and lucrative business move, particularly as the area population swelled to 18,000 by 1870. As shown below, Red Hook was a jumble of ships and shanties.
Henry, born in 1824, was the first from the Bavarian Cordes family to land in New York. The exact date of his arrival is uncertain, but his name appeared in an 1870 Brooklyn Eagle newspaper listed as a liquor dealer. By this time he was 46, married to Mary of similar German background and had three children, with a fourth to come. An 1870 directory put his address at One Summit Street, the site of his saloon with the family living upstairs.
Herman Cordes, born in Bavaria jn 1840 does not appear in the 1870 census, but an 1872 passport application indicates he had arrived in 1866, apparently unmarried. By 1974, he appears to have established his own saloon in Red Hook at No. One India Wharf. What Henry and Herman’s establishments looked like requires some conjecture. My guess is that they had a bar tended by themselves or a hired hand and also sold liquor by the jug or bottle. American Artist Wolf Kahn whose family ran a Brooklyn saloon has provided a canvas showing what such a place might have appeared inside.
How close the cousins were to each other is unclear. In 1876 a Henry Cordes and a H.H. Cordes, almost certainly our pair, are recorded jointly posting bond for a young German arrested as an illegal immigrant. Whatever the relationship between Henry and Herman, they shared common problems as saloonkeepers in Red Hook. Those might categorized as 1.Violence, 2.Women and 3.The Authorities.
1.Violence. According to the Brooklyn Eagle in 1873 a patrolman on his beat found a local shoemaker named Patrick Lysacht lying in front of Henry Cordes' address with his head bashed open and bleeding copiously. Apparently a drunken brawl in the saloon earlier had resulted when someone kicked Lysacht’s dog. Subsequent events were unexplained. Taken to the hospital, Lysacht died, leaving a wife and five children. Wolf Kahn in another painting caught the kind of violence that could erupt when men were drinking.
An incident at Herman’s saloon proved less fatal. The press reported that gunfire erupted in a fight between two men who were drinking in Cordes' "liquor store at the corner of the North Pier and India Wharf”. A bullet was fired that went through the floor. No one was hurt.
2. Women. The upper floors of Herman’s building held rooms that might have been used for any number of purposes including sexual encounters. In April 1884, a woman of various identities, call her “Bella,” sued the purser of a steamer, claiming that she had been assaulted on an outside stairway leading to the upper rooms and accused Herman of being an accomplice. Bella testified that she and the purser drank three glasses of beer each in Cordes' saloon, implying the owner set her up. Defended by friends for his respectability and character, Bella’s suit against Herman apparently went nowhere. The same year, however, Herman was reported in the press as accused of attempting to seduce “a pretty girl.” Further details were not forthcoming.
Three years later Henry Cordes would have an incident with presumed “soiled lilies.” He and a companion were charged with attempting “criminal assault” on two English women at a Coney Island hotel later identified as a “a disorderly house,” i.e. brothel. What Henry may have had in mind is unclear but the press identified him as a Redhook businessman, married and a family. Released on bond, Henry apparently later went free.
Both men faced court actions initiated by women who accused them of encouraging intoxication by their husbands. In 1886 Henry paid a fine of $100 (equiv. $2,200 today) on a suit brought by a Mrs. Mary Wigmore who claimed Cordes had sold liquor to her husband after being warned not to do so and thus contributed to making him a drunkard.
Herman was forced to face down, a Mrs. Warner, an irate wife who claim he sold her husband a beer illegally on Sunday. Herman claimed Mr. Warner was the culprit, demanding alcohol, a man whom he had ejected from the premises. Herman testified that when the husband left, Mrs. Warner was at the door and shaking her fist at him, declaring: “I will fix you for this.” 
3. The Authorities. Federal and New York officials played close attention to the liquor trade and thousands of Brooklyn residents spent endless hours and effort to avoid them. Illegal distilling was rampant in the New York Borough to the extent that Federal troop were dispatched there” to ferret out illicit stills, destroy them and arrest the perpetrators. An illustration from a national magazine caught the scene.
Although the Cordes boys apparently were not making illicit booze, they likely were buying it. Local authorities were their scourge. Herman seemed to be particularly harassed. In December 1878, he was found guilty of violating the excise law. The infraction likely related to his selling alcohol on a Sunday. New York “blue laws” mandated that establishments that sold alcohol had to be closed between midnight Saturday and midnight Sunday, an attempt to appease “moral reform” demonstrators. Dock and factory workers, however, worked six days a week with only Sunday off. This was the only day a working man could relax and go to a bar, often accompanied by wife and family.
Herman Cordes seemed to have the most problem with authorities. Whether the passion of Mrs. Warner prevailed or some other cause, Herman lost his license on India Wharf in 1883 and moved to the north pier of Columbia Wharf. Although he claimed to be selling nothing but soft drinks, police had reason to believe he also was trading in beer and hard liquor as well as abetting illegal gambling. Caught in a “sting” by undercover cops, Hermann was arrested, pled guilty and was fined only $25 by a clearly sympathetic judge.
Henry Cordes, died in March 1892 at the age of 67 and was buried in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery, Lot 9557, Section 18. The tall monument, topped by a statue of the Christ, gives testimony to the wealth he and his family had accrued from his saloon. A closeup of the inscription indicates that whatever was going on at that Coney Island hotel in 1887, Henry was remembered as a “beloved husband” and “dear father.” Eight years later, in March 1900 Herman Cordes, age 59, troubled with chronic lung disease, followed in death. He too was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
Thus ended the saga of the Cordes cousins, saloonkeepers in a section of Brooklyn in its heyday was as “wild and woolly” as many Western towns, a neighborhood where saloons abounded, violence was frequent, prostitution flourished, and armed troops were required to capture outlaw distillers. Red Hook in that era rightfully can take its place in history alongside Deadwood, Tombstone, and Dodge City — and Henry and Herman Cordes were an integral part of it all.
Note: This post would have been impossible without the Internet site of Maggie Land Blanck on the saloons and liquor stores of Red Hook during the 1870s, 1880s, and later. She has tracked many of the saloonkeepers, including the Cordeses. I have tried to enhance the information using ancestry.com and other websites to fill in details. For those interested I recommend her site. If you have other materials on Red Hook she invites contacts at maggie@maggieblanck,com.
No comments:
Post a Comment